I’ve been compiling a database for FIJA research purposes of all SCOTUS cases regarding jury issues. So far I’ve just casually dropped in cases as I happen across them, with a more thorough, systematic search to follow. But in just a few days, I’ve already come across more than a dozen cases dealing specifically with excluding blacks from serving on juries. The latest was just accepted by the Supreme Court this week, and the details are disturbing.

Two decades after his request for discovery regarding the State’s notes on jury selection in his case, Timothy Tyrone Foster came into possession of them through an open records request. This black man was convicted of killing a white woman and subsequently sentenced to death. His jury was all-white thanks to five black jurors being excluded-one for cause, and the other four stricken by the prosecution’s exercise of peremptory challenges.

Just one year after SCOTUS reaffirmed that exclusion of black jurors based on their race was impermissible, the defense challenged these strikes under the Batson ruling, but were repeatedly shot down by the court. Even with new evidence from the prosecutors’ notes that came to light in 2006, Georgia courts have refused to revisit this life and death matter. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.

What was the evidence that led to this review of whether or not the prosecution’s race-neutral explanations for striking all of the remaining black prospective jurors were sincere or pre-textual excuses to veil racial discrimination? Check it out via the links provided in the article below.